A job crisis in making in rural Bengal as Centre withholds NREGA funds

There is a job crisis brewing in rural West Bengal, which the ruling party Trinamool Congress claims is because the Centre has withheld funds due for implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in the state.

The TMC leadership claims that the Centre has, for the last five months, kept on hold the release of Rs 7,130 crore in funds under the MGNREGA. On Thursday, 10 TMC Members of Parliament submitted a memorandum to Union Minister of Rural Development Giriraj Singh demanding immediate release of the funds.

“In spite of proper submission of accounts with utilisation certificates by the state government for funds received earlier under the MGNREGA, no fund, or any response, has been received from your department, which is beyond the ethics of the said scheme; and the livelihood of the rural people in the state is suffering extremely,” the letter stated.

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Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had written to PM Modi on June 9 reminding him that MGNREGA-related funds had not been released since December for “reasons not known to the state government”. She also stated that she had yet to get any response from the PMO, or the ministry concerned, despite having raised the issue earlier in a letter dated May 12, 2022.

Banerjee alleged that BJP national president J P Nadda’s claim—which he made during his Kolkata visit—that the freeze was because the state hadn’t submitted utilisation certificates for the funds received in the last three years was a “blatant lie”.

“This is nothing but a blatant lie intended to gain political mileage at the cost of lakhs and lakhs of the rural poor in the state, who are passing through most distressing times due to non-payment of wages for their works,” she stated.

Sudip Bandyopadhyay, who was part of the TMC delegation, said on Thursday that the suggested next step should be a meeting between state and Centre’s officials to resolve the deadlock.

The state’s political representation is not happy with the freeze and is waiting for the Centre’s response to the latest memorandum. If things didn’t turn out favourable, a campaign against the freeze would be the next step, Bandyopadhyay said.

The Union minister, in a tweet, posted a photograph of the meeting and stated that his ministry and the MPs’ delegation successfully discussed the obstacles in implementing the Modi-government schemes in Bengal. Singh, however, also said that the West Bengal government had been requested to follow the guidelines of the scheme.